We Could Be Something Beautiful
by Acepilot6
Summary: The chaotic, romantic and unusual events of one summer in the life of Ginger Foutley and those around her. Reviews are ever appreciated.
1. Hell of a Summer

**We Could Be Something Beautiful**

Acepilot

_I was determined not to waste away the summer. I had been told as much by my mother. And my step-father. And my teachers. It was the summer between junior and senior year and it was the time for me to prepare for the most gruelling year of my life. It was 92 days of getting ready, proving myself._

_It was 92 days of something._

8 - * - * - 8

1. Hell of a Summer - The Triffids

8 - * - * - 8

It was a hot summer in Conneticuit. Hotter than she had any recollection of. _Probably hotter than any on record. Isn't the globe meant to be warming or something?_

Ginger sighed as she walked along the grass beside the road. She had a car - of sorts, a junker that Carl and Hoodsey had resurrected in ways that only they knew, and were allowed to keep on the proviso that they keep it roadworthy and that Ginger was allowed to use it until they were old enough to drive. Ginger had suspicions that they had cut this deal quite deliberately, mostly as a thank you to her for all her help over the recent winter. That, and she had good money that they had already built a much better car for themselves, and that a lack of license was definitely not stopping them, Blake and Brandon from tearing around the local counties until all hours of the night.

She had left her car at home today, however, deciding that she needed fresh air of the sort that only came from walking. And at least, in Sheltered Shrubs, there was never any shortage of places to walk. She had strolled down to the woods, wandered along the river, and was now picking her way along back to town, following the road back to the sound of kids, relieved to be free for the summer, tearing up the city. She imagined she could hear them even from this far away.

It was a beautiful summer day. It was the kind of summer day that just begged to be walked through.

She turned at a strange sound - an odd whirring and clicking. It sounded a bit like a bike but...deeper. Heavier.

Coming down the hill behind her was a boy on a motorcycle, albeit one with the motor off. She paused to watch the spectacle as he wrangled the bike in a straight line, trying to hold the momentum.

He wasn't wearing a helmet, or headgear of any kind, but was wearing a battered leather jacket. The piece of clothing looked in marginally better condition than the bike, which had clearly seen long years of service and better days. She suspected the engine was not running because it couldn't.

He cruised past with his ongoing momentum, throwing a wave as he went past.

She shook her head and continued on her way.

She caught up with him when she started up Euchrid Hill. Unencumbered, she was making good time, but with no engine to push him up the hill, he was having to do it himself, walking the old bike up toward the peak.

"You know, there's a motor in that," she told him.

He turned to her and seemed to consider her for a moment, perhaps trying to work out if she was being funny or just stupid. He seemed to decide on the former. "It's broken down. I only paid fifty bucks for it and I'm beginning to sense there's a reason."

He had brown hair in desperate need of a cut, wavy and shaggy, leaving him looking a bit like a slightly under-cared for dog. He was tall and lean with a slightly unusual shape to his head. She couldn't see through his hair well enough to see his eyes very clearly beyond the fact they were brown. "You didn't buy it off two kids, did you? A brunette and a blonde?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have I been had?"

"Nah, for fifty bucks you're lucky it had wheels. Get a warranty?"

"I was not offered one."

"They're slipping," she observed. "I haven't seen you around here before."

He nodded. "You wouldn't have, no. I'm not from around here."

"Where are you from?"

"A long way away," he said, not offering any further information. "Just visiting family for the summer."

She would have guessed he was about her age, but wouldn't be able to pin anything about him beyond that. They had reached the crest of the hill, and he hauled himself up onto the broken down bike.

"You want a ride?" he offered.

"Aren't motorbikes dangerous?" she asked. "I'd rather be in a car."

"Cars aren't all that safe," he said.

It wasn't anything so much about his voice but more his overall demeanour, but she felt him change as he said that.

"I'm Ginger," she said, on an impulse.

"Darker than ginger, surely," he said, looking her over. "Although that might be the light."

She rolled her eyes. "My name is Ginger."

"Ah," he said.

She waited a moment, before prompting, "And yours is..."

He hesitated. They were standing atop the hill, him atop his broken down bike, her next to him, waiting for an answer.

"Richard," he said.

She looked at him more closely. "You are not."

He smirked. "Bold call."

"You don't look like a Richard," she elaborated.

"Maybe I'm a Dick."

"Use that line a lot, do you?"

"No, actually that was the first. No-one's ever questioned my name before."

"First time for everything."

He let the smirk on his face blossom into a full-fledged smile, and shook his head slowly. "It's nice to meet you, Ginger. See you around."

And then he kicked off, the bike rolling effortlessly down the hill. He jumped a little in the seat, goosing the throttle, trying to open up the engine. It gave a few sputtering coughs before finally wheezing to life, and he was gone, around a corner at the base of the hill and on his way back into town.

8 - * - * - 8

_Okay, so I've not been around lately. There's been a lot of stuff going on, and I'm sorry for my absence. Anyway, this is a bit of an older number that I've been working on for a very long time, but one that I'm very fond of. I've just finished moving (again) and thought I'd dig it out and finish it. I hope you enjoy it._

_Reviews, questions and commentary are always appreciated._

_Acepilot_


	2. Sunday Best

**We Could Be Something Beautiful**

Acepilot

**8 - * - * - 8**

**2. Sunday Best - Megan Washington**

**8 - * - * - 8**

Band practice tended to drag on some days more than others. When the band were tightened up, firing off each other in sync, they could run through their "festival" set twice in an hour and a half and call it a day. Days like this, however, when they were trying to learn new songs, when Pierre and Tony were failing to sync up between bass and guitar, when Orion seemed to be struggling to keep time, they were days when Ginger wished she'd given up on being part of an ensemble and gone solo years ago.

Pierre's guitar never felt quite right in her hands - it was very clearly not her instrument. But they needed him to play piano, and that left her on guitar. She had suggested they find a second guitarist, but thus far no-one had been a serious candidate.

"We get sick when we get started," she began, "what you've got is what you wanted. I sleep in a lake and maybe know how many times you play my song."

Orion chipped in, offering, "Thirty-one, thirty-one," in perfect time and key.

They fired along perfectly until the chorus, when Tony slipped out of time, the harmony Orion and she were attempting fell to pieces, and Pierre brought it all to a grinding halt by bashing out the wrong chords quite deliberately.

"Alright," he said, rising from the keyboard, "I think that still needs some work. If indeed we want to persist with it."

"Why not?" Orion asked. "I think it's kind of cool. Different from our other covers, anyway."

"I like it," Ginger offered, intervening before the Frenchman and the drummer got into another argument over the setlist. "It's a bit of fun. Really kicks it up a notch, I think. We just need practice. And I need to work on the guitar bit."

"Worth sticking with," Tony agreed. "Sorry I dropped out there."

Pierre looked between the three of them, and shrugged. "Alright," he repeated. "Fun times ahead."

They went back to the songs they knew for the rest of practice, eventually reeling off their regular set in a timely fashion, before calling it a day, packing the keyboards and PA up, pushing Orion's drum kit back into the garage and loading the guitars into Pierre's car. The bassist and guitarist drove off, leaving Ginger and Orion standing there, in an empty driveway.

He threw her a charming smile. "Good work today."

He said this after every practice. She wasn't sure, sometimes, if he even listened anymore. Just assumed she was singing well until told otherwise.

"Thanks," she said, "I thought I was a bit flat on _Every Star_. You were good though."

The problem, she had decided, was that they had very much hit a wall in their relationship. It was fun. They were close, they had a nice time, they made music together. But they had been on dates to everywhere in Sheltered Shrubs at least a dozen times, they had seen every movie she ever had any desire to see, and they had, apparently, exhausted every topic of conversation that there was to talk about. They had been a couple for nearly three years and after a certain point, she supposed, it was just all too predictable. The rest of the high school had this kind of strange envy over them, the fact that they'd made it last for so long when most of their compatriots relationships lasted barely a week before being destroyed by the typical issues that came with being a teenager.

There was no secret, Ginger decided. There was no reason to break up. They saw each other regularly, they didn't fight.

Mostly.

"You want to come in?" he asked, nodding toward the house behind him. "My parents will be out for the afternoon."

She knew what _that_ meant. "Maybe not," she said. "Why don't we go get a cup of coffee?"

He looked taken aback. They both knew what was happening in this conversation and she sensed one of their relatively rare fights coming up. "Hey, not like that," he insisted. "Just come in and we'll watch TV and…I dunno…make out or something."

"The last few make out sessions have ended…badly," she reminded him. "And my answer hasn't changed."

"It's not ended 'badly'," he told her. "Okay, so we've reached a point in our relationship where - "

"Where you want something I don't," she said. "I'm not…I'm not ready yet, alright? We've been over this."

"Which is why I'm not bringing it up again."

But he did. No matter how many times they went over it, he brought it up. Simple kissing on the couch was turning rapidly into…other things that would inevitably lead to questions, requests, desires. They wouldn't be at school together next year, and she could feel Orion's need to…cement things between them.

They were things that Ginger wasn't sure she so much wanted to cement.

Orion was sweet, to a point. She had a nice time with him. But there was nothing really…there, beyond that. And maybe it was unfair to lead him to believe that there was.

But he kept things at bay.

"Look, I'm just gonna go home," she said.

"No, don't," he protested, but she cut him off.

"It's nothing. It's just…look, today's just not…right. I'll call you later. I'm sorry."

She didn't, however, particularly want to go home either. Because at home, there was Darren, and that was a whole other kettle of fish she wasn't exactly prepared to deal with.

She remembered back to the innocent days of junior high school when she couldn't get _any_ boys to look at her. Things were so much simpler then.

Nevertheless, she got in her car and drove, away from the disappointed Orion, away from her problems.

She wished, for once in her life, that she could just be someone else. Someone who Orion didn't want to have sex with, someone Darren wasn't obsessed with. Someone without parents so desperate for her to do well that they were beginning to push her a bit harder than before.

When she pulled into the petrol station to fill up her car, the boy from the other day was there with his motorcycle, watching the dollars tick over very closely as he pumped gas in. He had a helmet resting on the seat, and she was kind of pleased to know that he did at least own one.

She got out of her car at the pump next to his and called out, "Hey." It was a total impulse, she had no reason to talk to him and he to her, but she felt it was right to be friendly. She pulled out the hose and started filling her own vehicle.

He looked over at her and nodded. "Hi." He looked over her vehicle with a raised eyebrow. "Nice…car?"

"You're one to talk," she said. "Glue it back together?"

He was far from offended, instead shooting her a wry grin. "Duct tape," he corrected her. "You could fix a nuclear sub with duct tape."

She was quite impressed that he'd been able to fix _anything_ that had been through the hands of Carl and Hoodsey without their assistance in deciphering it, so decided to cut him some slack. "Glad to see you got it running."

"Like a dream," he told her. "A dream about a fire with a lot of black smoke sometimes, but that's still a kind of dream."

They both finished pumping their gas in and made their way into the shop. In a moment of chivalry, he held the door open for her with a smile and a broad wave of his hand. She giggled a little, shaking her head at the gesture, but did go in and pay first, trying not to wince as she did so. She did have a job for the summer, working casual shifts at the book store, and it was just enough to keep her in Penguin paperbacks and petrol and very little else. When he paid, she was a little envious of how little fuel his bike actually seemed to need.

"Sure you don't want to come for a ride now I've got it working?" he asked as they returned to the pumps. "It even steers."

She rolled her eyes at him, and he laughed. "What?"

"You keep rolling your eyes like that and one day they'll stick."

She shook her head but was very careful not to roll her eyes, which just made him laugh harder.

"See you down in the woods next time you feel like taking a walk," he told her. "I'm down there all the time."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said.

He kicked his bike to life, popping his helmet on and tearing away.

She watched him go for a moment, before shaking herself out of it and getting back in her car.

When she got home, she was not entirely surprised to find Darren at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee with Dave and laughing freely.

She resisted the urge to growl. It might not be a surprise, but it was no less annoying for it.

"Hi Dave. Darren," she offered, crossing the kitchen to get a glass of water.

Dave seemed to sense the atmosphere in the room chill almost instantly, but Darren didn't make any move to suggest realisation on his part.

"How was band practice?" Dave asked, trying, clearly, to break the palpable tension.

"It was good," she said, sipping at her water. "Tried some new songs, getting ready for the Summer Festival. Think we should go well." 

"You're entering the battle of the bands?" Darren asked, surprised. "I thought you guys didn't do those that much."

"A gig is a gig," she told him.

Dave's eyes flickered between the two of them for a moment, before he clearly made a decision. "Um…well, I've got that new medical journal I really should be reading up on, so -"

"You don't have to - " she began.

But - "No, no," he cut her off. "I'll leave you two to…talk," he said, scampering out of his own kitchen.

She could have growled. He meant well, she knew, but that was of limited usefulness to her. She didn't particularly want to be left alone with Darren. They had, in her view, nothing to talk about.

Darren, however, clearly felt differently. "So, Ginger - "

"Stop coming around here," she ordered him, abruptly. "Just - stop."

Darren had the audacity to look taken aback. "So, what? All those years of friendship and I'm meant to just…forget about everything that ever - "

"Don't give me that friendship malarkey. This has nothing to do with _friendship_. I know exactly why you're here."

He crossed his arms, but still didn't rise from his seat at the table. "Really?"

"Yes. Don't think I didn't notice that you started appearing a hell of a lot more when you broke up with Tegan. So, what? You're through with cheerleaders now? Bored with them? And now I'm just meant to fall into your arms or something? Go back to the way things used to be?"

He attempted to look offended at her commentary on his motives, but couldn't quite shake the guilty look in his eyes. "It's not like that."

"You've almost got yourself convinced there, don't you?" she said. "Our 'friendship' wasn't quite so important to you for the last three years. I'm not some substitute for a girlfriend, Darren."

"I never said you were a substitute," he protested.

"Well, I'm not your girlfriend, either. I'm with Orion, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," he said. "Why him?"

"Why not?" she asked. She knew it was a terrible response, but it was honestly the only reason she could, on the spur of the moment, come up with for her persistence in he relationship with him.

"We're perfect for each other," Darren told her. "I know it."

"Well, I don't," she said. "Maybe when we were younger we could have been. Maybe someday we will be. I won't deny that you mean a lot to me Darren. But we're totally different people now. I don't know what you think you know about me, but I doubt it's what I know about myself. So until you're willing to admit that, then just…leave me alone."

She could see in his eyes that there were a million things he wanted to say to her, denials and insistences and corrections and anguished declarations of love.

But for once, he didn't offer any of them. He just stood up from the table, pushing his chair back in slowly, and brushed past her on his way out the door. Their bodies connected for a moment, and she would admit to feeling a little thrill course through her. But that was a long way from wanting to be in a relationship with someone.

For the second time that day, she wished she was someone else, someone who could take the easy option. Someone who could say yes - yes to Orion, and let it mean nothing, yes to Darren, open to the possibility that it might work.

But that wasn't who she was.

8 - * - * - 8


	3. Recurring Dream

**I Offered It Up to the Stars and the Night Sky  
><strong>Acepilot

8 - * - * - 8  
><strong>3. Recurring Dream - Crowded House<strong>  
>8 - * - * - 8<p>

Ginger stumbled down the ravine toward the river, trying desperately to keep her footing and not end up covered in mud. She half-succeeded, skidding down along the track that had been cleared by generations of bushwalkers traversing the area around Sheltered Shrubs. She stuck a hand out to arrest herself on the slope and ended up getting it stuck in the mud, but at least it slowed her momentum.

She staggered the rest of the way down and bled the rest of her momentum off by grabbing hold of a convenient tree. She could hear the river flowing somewhere nearby though she honestly didn't know whereabouts. The tracks she'd been following had seemed reasonably fresh and lead from the motorbike parked at the top of the hill, but that was the only hint that she might have tracked down anything at all.

She took a moment to enjoy the peace, though, deciding that even if she had come all this way just to find a muddy slope and some forest, at least it was pretty forest, and peace and quiet. She hadn't exactly had much of that lately. Between Carl and Hoodsey spending most of their time holed up in Carl's room making…noises that she'd rather not think to carefully about, Orion and she in this strange passive-aggressive not-fight, Darren appearing at her shoulder at every opportunity, and Dodie always aching to bend her ear about something or other, she didn't have a lot of chances to find some peace and quiet these days.

She could, she decided, do with some more of it.

Then there was the sound of a twig snapping, and suddenly 'Richard' was next to her, dropping from somewhere in the tree above her and brushing himself off as if this was an everyday occurrence for him. He had his jacket draped over one arm and a backpack slung over one shoulder.

"Didn't think you were coming," he told her, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "Come on, the river is this way, if you want to wash that mud off your hand."

8 - * - *- 8

"So what do you do?" she asked, rubbing her now-clean hands together.

He peered over at her. "I'm a student. I'm about to go into my last year of high school. You?"

"Same," she told him. "Where are you from?"

She'd asked this question before and gotten a rather evasive answer, but apparently now he wasn't quite so fussed. "California."

"You're a long way from home."

"I needed a change."

This seemed reasonable enough, so she opted to let it slide. "Why do you ride a motorcycle?"

"We all need some way to get around."

"You don't do it because you think it makes you look cool, do you?"

He laughed. "I don't think so. Do I look cool?"

"Not especially, no." He did, a little, but she wasn't about to tell him that. Not so much because of the motorcycle but because of the complete lack of self-awareness he projected, like when he cruised past her with the motor off, or fell out of a tree as a matter-of-course. "You been riding long?"

"I learnt how when I was a kid, on a farm I used to visit some summers. It's been a while, but you don't forget. You ever ridden?"

"No, I found it stressful enough learning to drive, thank you very much."

He didn't offer a witty comment to that one, simply nodding as if this was a reasonable explanation.

"So, what do people do for kicks around here?" he asked, sitting down and leaning himself against the trunk of a tree, digging idly at the ground beside him with a stick. "The only person I know around here is Noelle and I don't think her ideas of fun match up with most peoples."

That caught her a little off guard. "Noelle. You know Noelle Sussman?"

"Cousin," he explained. "Her mother is my father's sister."

_This_ guy was _related_ to _Noelle Sussman_?

This simultaneously explained a lot and left her baffled.

"Wow," she muttered. "No, Noelle is not known for her traditional views on entertainment, you're quite right."

She sat down herself, cross legged and hoping that she wasn't going to get mud all over her trousers. Or at least that if she did, it would be the kind that was easy to get off.

"I didn't think so," he said. "So, come on, what do you do for fun around here?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. The Summer Festival is on in about a week. I work and sing in a band."

"You sing?"

She nodded. "I'm a lyricist."

"Cool."

"What do you do for fun where you're from?"

"We used to go to the arcade, play soccer, basketball. That kind of thing."

She noted the use of the words "we" and "used to" in that sentence.

"But since I've been here I've just kind of been doing…well, this," he said, indicating the area around them. "I come down here and I walk or I sit or I…whatever."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

She felt, suddenly, like she was intruding, but then remembered that she'd been _invited_, and so probably wasn't.

"I write," she said. "In my free time, I write. Not just lyrics - stories, poems, everything."

"I draw."

"You're an artist?"

He scoffed. "That's stretching a point. But it's something I enjoy and do well. Or I'm told I do it well, anyway."

She looked at his backpack, discarded on the ground nearby. "Can I see?"

He shook his head. "No. Maybe some other time."

"I have a boyfriend," she blurted out. "His name's Orion and he's the drummer in my band."

He looked at her curiously, but nodded slowly. "Nice guy?"

"Yeah, he's okay."

He seemed to be holding off an urge to laugh, and she wondered if maybe she had completely misread something. It had seemed very, very important in that moment that he know she was taken. She wasn't exactly sure why.

"Why did you come to Conneticuit for the summer?" she asked, desperate to make some sort of conversation. "Wouldn't most people go in the other direction? _To_ California?"

The little change she'd noticed a few times seemed to click in him again, and she noticed it much more clearly this time, given how happy he'd looked a moment ago. "I needed to get away, you know? Just needed a change for a while."

"Fair enough." What else was there to say?

He looked at her closely. "You want to come for a ride?"

"That's three times you've offered me that."

"Three times you've said no?"

She was never sure what took hold of her in that moment, but for reasons she would never truly understand, she didn't say no like she should have. The horror stats about motorcycles and Mom's stories about crash victims getting carted into the hospital all seemed to drain out of her head at the earnest expression on his face. "Nah, I'll come along."

He grinned broadly.

8 - * - * - 8

The helmet he'd provided her with seemed sturdy enough. He only owned one, he explained, not exactly having passengers as part of normal affairs, but he promised that he'd be careful and that if any cops caught them he'd keep her name well out of it. She didn't know of anyone ever having received a ticket of any kind besides parking in Sheltered Shrubs, so wasn't that stressed about the legal aspect in this moment, but she was kind of concerned about this new friend she'd just made dashing his brains out on the asphalt, and so hoped he was being truthful in his assertion that he knew what he was doing.

"Hold on tight," he ordered after starting up, and she did, aware that this was a very, very stupid and very risky thing to do, but determined to see it through now.

They went slowly to start with - he opened the throttle gradually, clearly trying not to startle her with speed. The town roads they were on sloped slightly, but he was heading away from town, toward the southern highway. The further they got away from Sheltered Shrubs, the greater the weight she felt lifting off her shoulders. Out here, in the forest, on the road, she was finally in some sort of peace - out here she didn't have to be Orion's girlfriend or Darren's obsession or the perfect student.

She had never contemplated running away from her problems before. But she was starting to see the charms in it.

When the road became the highway, he finally let loose, goosing the throttle. She almost leapt out of her seat at the sound of the engine giving a less-than-reassuring howl, at the feeling of it between her legs coming to life, but her grip on him kept her anchored, and he hadn't jumped. No, he'd laughed, not at her, she realised, but at the sensation. This was what he was looking for. This feeling. Going fast.

He didn't ride a motorcycle because it made him look cool. He rode it because of _this_.

His hair streamed back into her face and she pulled away a little as he tore down the asphalt. There were no cars for miles around and she was determined not to stress about the possibilities of how this could go wrong, and so stopped looking out for potential obstacles and instead looked at him.

With his hair out of his eyes, she could see them properly - well, the one on the right, anyway. But even with only half a view, it was very clear that he had come _alive_, that suddenly all those wry comments and that guarded nature was stripped away, and he was completely content.

Maybe he'd brought her with him because he needed to share this with someone.

She could hardly blame him.

8 - * - * - 8

When he dropped her back at her car, both of them were well and truly windswept, and he had a mischievous grin on his face. "Hope I didn't go too fast for you," he told her.

She punched him on the arm. "That was nothing," she told him. "I've been on faster merry-go-rounds."

"I take that as a challenge," he informed her. "Next time -"

"Oh, no next time."

"You say that now, but you'll have second thoughts. Trust me."

She shook her head. "Doubtful."

He waited while she unlocked her car, from which he fetched his backpack, where he'd left it before they went on their ride. "Hope I see you again."

A little part of her mind told her that she really didn't know this guy - she still didn't believe his name was 'Richard', after all - but wasn't that the point? She was looking for something completely unlike her. She wanted to escape her life.

She wanted to run away. If only for a moment at a time.

"You really here most days?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes. From early to late."

"Well then," she said, pulling open her car door. "I'll see you, then."

"Glad to hear it."

She let him go first, swinging around a u-turn and tearing back off toward town. She deliberately waited a few moments - not wanting to know for sure where he was going, even though she had a pretty good idea. It was better that way.

8 - * - * - 8

_reviews are ever appreciated._


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